Our Golden Future

This is great! All you got to do is listen in and wait for others to come along and express likewise feelings toward your long felt insights. And they will come.

I am blessed with a rather extensive list of favorites. Heroes of mine. To expel, deny or ignore proven masters and their contributions, was never a good idea and of course nothing could be more true than what David Ogilvy. Leo Burnett, Bill Bernbach, Clause C. Hopkins, John Powers… have believed in all along.

Excuse me while I digress

With the exception of Christoph Schlingensief, Michael Schirner, Thomas Meinecke, Heinz Schwaiger, Amir Kassaei and Peter Kruse, international references outweigh personal local heroes. By which only 3 are directly involved in marketing, while Meinecke and Schlingensief are thought leaders in cultural affairs to be taken seriously. Christoph Schlingensief then died of cancer only four days ago on August 21. With every appearance on German TV and widely distributed videos, Schlingensief exemplified how putting ideas first and taking action accordingly have an immediate impact on an ever growing following in a population wishing to contribute and share. ‚If you reach for the stars, you might not quite get one, but you won’t end up with a handful of mud, either.‛ as Leo Burnett long stated. And boy, did Schlingesief start off with a handful of mud when I left Germany for the US. And boy, has he made ideas that do popular even before Gareth Kay coined the phrase for marketing when I returned to Germany to go to work for McCann Erickson in Frankfurt.

Back to the future

I am back from the living dead, furthermore expressing my condolences to the dead living, the large number of advertising zombies who have failed to put ideas first… Dead mad men and their dying advertising businesses. Now there is plenty of evidence that ad shops which never expressed doubt to keep their focus on creative and ideas have been laughing on their way to the bank despite the economic recession. BBH to name just one. Followed by a good number of emerging marketing businesses, sporting new business models altogether are doing rather well. Victor & Spoils with crowdsourcing, Edward Boches with Mullen or Gay Gaddis with her T3 think tank besides many shining stars carrying meaningful names such as mother, naked communications, anomaly, barbarian to name a few. I hold dear Edward Boches, Ana Andjelic and Gareth Kay. Here is why:

ideas that do rise to the top

Gareth Kay—for his ever insightul comparison of the bower bird and the peacock by which the later defines much of what David Ogilvy wished to see in the trumpeter swan [speak: Creative Director]. Gareth Kay has coined ideas that do which I most seriously regard as direct call-to-action for the entire ad industry as the most practical of universal solutions.

Ana Andjelic—has pointed the way for our ad industry to gain greater efficiency without sacrifice of effectiveness.
“i don’t care about why people do things, i care about how they do them.” How rude! – How insightful! It is no longer necessary for our ad industry

long tailfresh ideas come your waywhen the time is right

research to try and define why the consumer does things and focus instead on how the consumer does things. Trusting the convenience of the evolutionary path, digital is offering, deeper insights will present themselves when the time is right. All eyes on how the consumer does things for now. Find Ana’s entry here.

Edward Boches is all over the place and doing so makes his agency look good. It get’s us interested in other people he converses with. I may not do Edward justice, yet following each other around is most important

Boulder Digital Works

for people of the ad industry for their industry to become transformative. Mullen’s website was first to market with using wordpress technology. Mullen is of course at it with ideas that do. And they have digital footprints as a service offering.

Peter Kruse. It took me half a year of blogging to finally come across a German thought leader who’s actions I can believe in. I was about to shut down my blog for lack of interest when Peter Kruse offered an explanation and good reason to move on. Apparently it is the clash of digital visitors versus digital beings that make blogging out of Germany feel cumbersome as if writing a diary in solitude. It’s my prejudice to cast German marketing practitioners as digital visitors rather than beings and I used to share much of the fear of publicness with my peers. The lack of connected people within the German ad marketplace was as obvious back in industrial times, unless perhaps one is willing to fraternize and join the ad club. Which of course I am not inclined to do. Besides Peter Kruse’s efforts, Jeff Jarvis came a long way to make friends and convince the German people of security risks when restricting publicness in general and Google street view in particular.

Amir Kassaei—Germany’s acclaimed top creative leads the way with ideas that do. You find his fun theory for VW here. I’d be interested to know if you arrive at my conclusion that these in fact are ideas that do. I’d be likewise interested in learning if Amir and the creators at DDB appreciate their ideas to being ideas that do?